Phone Calls
by GennaJoy
Summary: The important phone calls of Don and Sloan's relationship
1. Chapter 1

Length of Relationship: 9 weeks

It's a balmy Thursday in the early evening and he's sitting on the airplane, waiting for the final passengers to board the flight, flicking through his twitter feed and trying his hardest not to think about her. Or more specifically how he left her. He can't believe that he forgot to say good bye and he feels like a dick. To be fair, it's not that he forgot to say goodbye all together, it's just that he forgot until it was too late.

He waited until 20 minutes before he had to jump in a cab to start wandering over to her office only to have the sudden and sickening realisation that she was on the air doing her four o'clock market wrap up.

He walks into the control room and waits for Zane to call a commercial break and then all but runs into the studio, "Hey," he greets her as he nears the news desk.

"Hi," she looks up at him, a bit surprised, "I couldn't find you before I came in here," she tells him, and now he feels worse.

He shakes his head, "yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot you had to be on the air," he tells her, it's a shitty excuse but it's the truth.

She pauses a moment and he can tell that Zane is talking in her ear about something, she turns back a moment later, "you have to go now?" she asks, she looks a bit disappointed.

"Yeah, in a minute," she nods and looks down at her papers, "I'm sorry, I wanted to say good bye properly," he tells her.

She gives him a look that clearly reads, 'if you wanted to say good bye properly you'd have come and found me before I was sitting in front of a bunch of cameras,' but instead she says, "It's fine, have a good weekend, I'll see you Monday morning." Just from that he knows it is anything but fine, because she knows that he actually gets back on Sunday night at 6, and had been planning on coming back to her place.

"It's not fine, but I'll make it up to you when I get home," he tells her, not sure what else to offer.

She doesn't really react to his offer, scribbling something on the paper in front of her, suddenly she gets that far away glance again, "thirty seconds," she tells him and taps her ear piece, indicating that he needs to get out of her shot.

"Ok," he takes the hint, he pauses just a second and then reaches over and rubs a thumb across the back of her hand resting on the desk, he knows she hates PDA in the office, and he respects that, but he just wants her to know he's sorry, "I'll miss you," he offers.

She looks up at him, "yeah, you too," she says, but there's no real emotion in it so he excuses himself, and he hears her broadcast kick back in as he walks out the studio door.

So now he's sitting on a plane, watching people still filter on and try to jam their luggage into the overhead lockers, and he's so mad at himself because this is the opposite of how he wanted to treat her. He cares about her, so much more than he had ever expected to, and he misses her already, he's dreading the next four days without seeing her at all. Then suddenly his phone buzzes in his hand, it's her.

He answers and raises it to his ear, not sure what to expect, probably a telling off if she has any sense. "Hi," he offers cautiously.

She pauses a moment and he panics, "you should still come over on Sunday night," she tells him.

He feels some relief flood in, "Okay," he tells her

"I was annoyed," she explains, although she shouldn't have to, "I wish you would have said good bye"

"I know, I'm sorry," he tells her again, not that the platitudes are really worth very much, but he really does feel terrible, and I wants her to understand that.

"It's fine," she reiterates, a little more sympathetically then she had in the studio.

He tries again, "it's not fi.."

"It's fine, I know it was a mistake," she cuts him off, "I'll just miss you," she says sadly.

"You could still join me," he offers, not holding out much hope, but still wishing she'd come keep him company on what is bound to be a long four days with his family.

"No," she insists, although to his surprise her resolve sounds as if it has weakened incredibly with his departure.

"Why?" he pushes.

"Its your grandmothers 85th birthday," she tells him as if that's a reason and not an unrelated statement.

"Yeah, so? She'd love to meet you," his lips are curling up at the corners, and he thinks there's a chance he might just change her mind.

"We've only been dating a couple of months, I don't really think it's appropriate," in past relationships he would have agreed wholeheartedly, in fact he hasn't taken a single girlfriend home to Pittsburgh. A few of them had met his parents or siblings when they came to visit him in Manhattan. Sloan was the only woman he had ever considered, let alone tried to convince, to come back with him.

Deciding to try a more forceful approach, he tells her, "don't be ridiculous, I'm going to book you a flight."

"Don," She warns, but there is no apprehension in her voice, in fact, if anything, she just sounds a little excited.

"Please come, it'll be nice!"

There is a momentary pause, "ok," she agrees.

She organises with Mackenzie to skip her segment on NewsNight the following evening so that she can go straight to the airport and catch a 6:00pm flight to Pittsburgh after her wrap up.

Don picks her up at the airport a couple of hours later, he's borrowed his sisters SUV, and with it he somehow got given his sisters 6 year old daughter. It's probably a good thing, because when he meets Sloan at the arrivals lounge she's clearly incredibly nervous about being there. But Ruby is the most affable child he knows, and gives Sloan a big hug, telling her she looks just like Mulan and even Sloan finds that funny. As they walk out of the airport, he pulls her suitcase with one hand, while the dark haired tot's sweaty little hands are clamped firmly onto both grown-ups. He realises that they must look incredibly domestic, it makes him a little happy.

The weekend is a whirlwind, they manage to fit 7 meals with various family members into 48 hours, and it's tiring but mostly good. His family seems to like her a lot, and several people comment on how happy he looks, which makes her swell with pride. But no family event would be complete without a few awkward moments, the worst is when his grandfather spends almost 20 minutes at the big birthday lunch talking loudly about how he hates the Japanese, only for Don's father to finally point out that, "Donald's new girlfriend is Japanese."

"Oh I'm not Japanese," she corrects politely, "I'm Vietnamese," she tells the long table of relatives who are all looking incredibly embarrassed.

"Jesus Christ, don't even get me started on that lot," he proclaims to a chorus of groans from his relatives, "what website did he buy you off of?"

The table erupts with outrage, but Don notices Sloan laughing next to him, as does everyone else as they eventually calm down, "as if you could afford me," she chuckles to him.

His grandfather cracks a grin, "I like this one Donny, she's sharp," he proclaims, as if Don ever needed anyone to tell him Sloan was quick witted.

She's a hit, his mother loves her, or more his mother loves the fact that Don clearly likes her enough to have brought her home. The woman who already has six grandchildren is desperate for more, and as he is actually the second oldest of four and the only one yet to reproduce, she takes Sloan's presence as a part of the family as a sign of good things to come. At the airport, Ruby cries when he and Sloan (but mostly just Sloan) have to say goodbye to her, and he just has this feeling in his gut, that this will be the first of many 'family' trips that they take together.


	2. Length of relationship: 5 months, 6 days

Length of relationship: 5 months, 6 days

He stares at his phone, waiting for it to ring, wondering if it will, or if he should be the one to call her.

He doesn't really know what to do, they've never had a fight like this before, they squabble and disagree plenty, but this was different. Over the past hour and a half he has tried to reason that it was always going to happen. All couples fight, he and Sloan are no different, he knew it was coming, he just hadn't expected it to be this way.

He shakes his head, staring at his half finished second drink, he thinks to himself that he should have pulled her segment from the show, he should never have let her on the air tonight. She'd been in a mood all day, the bits and pieces he'd caught of her 4 o'clock show had been different than usual. Her normally calm and explanatory tone had been replaced by an angry and punchy vibe, her address to her viewers had sounded like a lecture and he'd caught the end of Zane scolding her in her office afterwards. He just dismissed it though, everyone has bad days, and he certainly had more of them than most people, so he cut her some slack and assumed that she'd even out as the day went on, but she didn't. Her appearance on Will's show was unnecessarily argumentative, she was bossy and contrary and at the time all he thought was, _that's weird, she's in a weird mood today!_ Why the fuck hadn't he cut her segment, if she'd never been on the air, she wouldn't have had the opportunity to do what she did, and then he wouldn't have gotten mad at her and they wouldn't be in this mess. That said, he's not her fucking keeper, he's her boss, and yeah sure, he's also her boyfriend, but at work, when she's on his show, he's her boss and she is supposed to fucking listen to him, so how dare she pull the stunt she did. He always thinks it's funny and kind of cute when she defies Zane, but that's because Zane is a legitimate backwards thinking moron and she has little to no respect for Zane, but he is her boyfriend and he thought they respected each other.

So now he doesn't know what to do, because he is livid, and he is entitled to that because she is the one who screwed him over tonight, but he is the one who just broke up with her in a screaming match and stormed out of the apartment.

She doesn't cope well with emotional things, he knows that, it's what he signed up for, so instead of going home to drink himself into an enraged coma, he's sitting at a bar two blocks from her apartment, not quite finishing his second drink because he needs his faculties intact to deal with this, deal with her. He can't go home, because even though he just broke up with her, hes pretty sure he also needs to go back and look after her, because he thinks he might have just hurt her really badly.

…

She didn't wait until the end of the show to leave, the second he booted her off the air she stormed off to her office, grabbed her things and went home. There was no chance in hell she was going to stay in the office and see him, she was incensed at his lack of journalistic integrity.

Walking into her apartment she slammed the door, hearing the pictures mounted on that wall give a little rattle, she threw her handbag at the couch on her way to the kitchen and she poured herself a generous glass of wine, and essentially sculled the entire drink. When she placed the glass back on the kitchen counter there was a momentary loss of anger where she felt the intense dread lurking in the back of her mind about the oncoming fall out of her interview. Deciding that anger was easier than fear she let the emotion sweep back in and take hold.

He stormed through her door half an hour later, to find her pacing her living room, "what the fuck was that?" he yelled before he'd even finished closing the door.

"Journalism," She spat back, "he's a lying sack of shit and I was calling him on it!"

"He's a Supreme Court Judge, can cannot talk to a Supreme Court Judge like that ever, let alone ON AIR! Have you gone fucking insane?" he yelled at the same volume even though he was now less than two feet from her.

"Don, he's a criminal," she argued, before being cut off by a dramatic scoff.

"He is not a criminal, you're being ridiculous," he dismissed.

"He is the scum of the earth, I don't give a shit if I offended him, someone needs to stand up to him," she matched his incredible volume.

"You were so far out of line, I told you what you were allowed to ask, I fucking wrote it down, it was idiot proof," he says to insult her.

She decides she's not just going to just take that though, "I am not a sheep, I asked the questions that needed to be asked."

"You weren't allowed to ask any of that," he tells her menacingly.

His stern expression freaks her out a bit so she turns away from him yelling over her shoulder, "I don't need your permission to ask…"

"Yes you fucking do," he all but screams, and she turns back to stare at him, she looks mad, but also a little like she's going to cry. She looks the same way she did the day that Charlie yelled at her in the newsroom after the Fukashima incident, but he carries on, she needs to hear this, she needs to know that what she did was wrong. "I am the producer, and it's my show, it's my god damn integrity that you just threw under the bus and my job you just risked."

"What integrity?" she spits back insultingly.

"Don't you dare, there is a time and a place… that wasn't it."

"Yes it was, it was right there and you passed up an opportunity most journalists would give their left foot for because you were too fucking scared," she accuses.

They carried on like this for fifteen minutes, the argument showing no signs of slowing down, but getting steadily nastier as they went. Until he hears himself yell, "I can't do this anymore."

"Do what?"

"This," he points between them indicating their relationship, she is suddenly silent, the only noises she makes are the sounds of her breathing, it is ragged from all of the screaming. "What you did tonight; you have no respect for me, I can't do this," he tells her, but her face shows no sign that she's understanding him or even really listening to him, her jaw is still clenched, her expression frozen in fight mode, "I'm done," he spits, before he picks up the bag that he dropped by the door on his way in and leaves the apartment in the same manner he arrived in.

He stares at his phone, willing it to light up, with the awful picture of them that she set as his caller id, he finishes the last of his drink and goes to climb off the bar stool just as his phone begins to vibrate across the counter top, as if his wish was what made it happen. There it is, the world's most awkward photo of them, eyes squinting in the sun, she thought it was hilarious at the time, he clicks answer and brings the phone to his ear, he has no idea what to expect, and no idea what to say. The phone rests against his ear for a moment, and he takes a breath before trying to speak, but then he's not sure if he should apologise or just say hi, or maybe even yell some more because he's still so mad. He doesn't quite get anything out before he hears her "where are you?"

"Why?" he asks indignantly.

"I just," pause, "where are you?" she sighs, her voice is meek but her exhalations read loudly and clearly that she's still somewhat pissed off.

"At home," he lies, he supposes that he doesn't want her to panic, "What do you want Sloan?" he's not really sure why he's being so evasive.

She doesn't answer him, and he can't seem to read the subtext of her silence, it's too tense and it draws out, he lets her sit there without saying anything for a minute.

"Sloan," he repeats, nothing, but he knows she's still there, "Sloan, what do you want?" but he's not asking the same way as before, it's not a petulant throw away, he's genuinely asking her what she wants; from him, for them, "Sloan?"

When she finally speaks her voice cracks with a small sob that she attempts to swallow, "you just left," she tells him.

"Yeah," he agrees, it's a confirmation and a question, 'why does it matter?'

"You can't just leave in the middle of an argument," she argues pettily.

"Sloan," he warns her, he doesn't want to put up with anymore crap tonight, he's so tired and so done with it.

She doesn't say anything for a little while again, he takes his time to examine the old condensation rings on the bar, until he hears her, "come back," she whispers it.

He lets the phone drop away from his ear to give himself a moment to think, he doesn't know what to do, maybe they need a night of space, maybe they're too tired and emotional to deal with this now, maybe he should leave it for tomorrow? But she's asking him to come back to her, and that's what he wants, so maybe she should just do it.

He raises the phone back to his ear to ask her 'why?' but as he's about to speak he realises that she's gone, its just a dial tone that he's listening to.

He unlocks her apartment door, a bit afraid of what he's going to find, but it's silent within. The lights are turned off in the living room, but he can see soft lamplight filtering out from her open bedroom door. He walks over her room, slowly, loud enough that if she didn't notice the front door opening and closing she'll hear him approach. He stands in her doorway, taking in the dimly lit scene; she sits cross legged on her bed in pj pants and a tank top, which in its self is unnatural and foreign to him, he's used to seeing her sleep naked or in one of the many t-shirts of his that have accumulated at her place. Her bed is still made, she hasn't tried to climb under the covers, and spread in front of her are the disembowelled sections of multiple newspapers. She's made an attempt to distract herself from the fight in the almost two hours that he's been gone, however, her stare is vacant and he can tell from her far away expression that she has not been successful in reading anything of a distracting nature. She looks up at him as he leans against the door frame, her gaze is fleeting and her eyes never meets his, but it is long enough for him to just make out in the low light that her face is blotchy from having been crying. He walks, sighing around to his side of the bed, he toes of his shoes and leans to shift some of the papers out of his way before he sits on the bed, legs stretched out in front of him. He leans back against the head board and rubs his hands over his face in frustration and exhaustion.

"Sloan," he mutters, it carries so much weight even though he has no real idea what meaning he was trying to impose onto it. He sees from the corner of his eye one of her hands swipe at a runaway tear, and he doesn't know what to say so he just reaches out, one hand behind her neck, akin to the way she grabbed him in the control room the day of their first kiss, and pulls her body into his. She crumbles silently into him, a mess of knees and elbows and she holds on tight around his neck where she has firmly latched herself. He can't believe this is how their evening went, he is so thoroughly exhausted, and mad, but he is glad he came back, because he realises while his shirt collar collects a few tears that even while he's this angry, he is still so completely in love with her, and they can fix this.


End file.
